Team:Freiburg/Practices

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Human Practice

Human practice is a key component of each iGEM Project. Therefore, it also played an important role in our work. The DiaCHIP is upposed to be available for everyone, even accessible in tropical or arid regions. Exactly for this reason, we wanted to know how the DiaCHIP is perceived in public. Thus, we conducted a survey to evaluate the necessity and acceptance of our project within the general public.

When somebody is working in the field of synthetic biology it is inevitable for the researcher to deal with some ethical questions. Therefore, we had a meeting with the head of the institue for ethics and history of medicine (PD Dr. J. Boldt) to evaluate our project and ethics in synthetic biology in general.

Besides discussing ethical issues we educated the public about synthetic biology and gave interested pedestrians a deeper insight into molecular biology as well as into our project at this year's Freiburg Science Fair. Additionally, we gave a lecture about synthetic biology and the iGEM Competition in general for a class of Liberal Arts and Sciences students at the University College of Freiburg.

Finally, we participated in an Europe-wide theater project in the framework of SYNENERGENE called “Re-engineering life or Do we want to be unlimited” as experts with scientific background.